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EVENT SUMMARY: HOW HAS TECHNOLOGY CHANGED THE WAY WE CREATE SELF IDENTITY?

November 3, 2016

Dear All attendees of ‘How has Technology changed the way we create self identity’ Brainplay last week.

It was quite a varied and meandering discussion that had its pros and cons. The topic was broad and thus it was natural that we covered such a breadth of ideas and comments, learnt a lot, and yet could have spent the whole evening on defining identity.

Below are some key points noted from the talk and at the base of this is a link to similar events.

Has technology actually changed us, comments rising that we’ve always been deeply empathetic yet perhaps it’s the freneticism that tech has introduced that has made things feel more acute?

Thatcherism & Reaganism introduced a culture of individualism that we are yet to move away from, understand or measure, most highly described by the enormous growth of Social Media.

The concept of a technology enabled “false” social media lifestyle is similar of wartime Propaganda.

Attendee James recommended the film Hypernormalisation (which is amazing, if not completely harrowing!) and in the film it talks of the Soviet Union’s lie to itself – that everyone puts on the image that everything is fine yet below the surface people are losing complete hope – is that being reflected in a post-2008 financial crash right now where uncertainty is scary yet building an image on social media is one of the few things you can control. How healthy for a society is it to completely be lying to itself?

The term ‘Online Citizen’ was discussed as how internationally based people chose to identify themselves.

“Every generation struggles with adopting new technologies” – are what we going through just natural and a direct result of technology in the first place – was the printing press a bigger change at the time?

“The Democratic process no longer represents us in a digital manner”…”The current political systems were set up in a non-digital world”

“The important dates are the ones we realise we have a responsibility”

The Victorian era produced a better and more accessible education system, improving communication tools and languages, thus a better tool for self-reflection.

Due to technology it is being noted in scientific studies that young children under the age of 10 are experiencing structural changes to their brains. Is this temporary neuro-plasticity or is tech actually changing brains permanently?

As referenced earlier in the talk, via Hypernormalisation, it’s healthy to look up to something rather than abolish the process of politics – so what type of politics are we looking to create? “Google knows more about me that a politician, who can help aggregate data to make more effective decision making??”

The notion of Liquid Politics was introduced. How make politics more human-centric by enabling the personal transfer of a vote to someone you trust in order that they may make the right decision on a topic of which they are more learned.